Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King

by Blackmore, Keith C.

  But that was just one lucky shot.

  Gus continued shooting. He hit torsos, shoulders, even twanged a round off a helmet. Collie joined in from the other side, catching fallen attackers from an angle. Men screamed. Some of those on the ground tried crawling out of harm’s way. One fell against the front of the armored truck just below Collie’s perch and crawled underneath the front bumper.

  Gus directed his fire at the masked figures between the trucks, driving them to the ground. Then his gun clicked empty, and a crossbow bolt buzzed by, almost shaving him to the jawbone. That near connection startled the shit out of him, and he dropped behind the mound.

  Across the way, with a man facedown and dead between them, was Collie with her handgun. She cocked her head at him in a how about that shit! kinda way. They stayed there for seconds, waiting for more. When none came, Collie reached out and patted down the back of the nearby corpse.

  The screaming on the other side had died away into pain-stricken moans.

  “Wearing a vest,” Collie muttered, studying the body between them. “That’s not fair.”

  “I think they were all wearing something.”

  Collie glanced toward the tunnel behind them.

  “Think they’re there yet?” Gus asked.

  She shook her head. She then peeked over the top of the rubble and dropped back. “Looks like they’re licking each other’s asses.”

  A bolt sizzled overhead, bouncing off a wall before hitting pavement. Engines revved to life then, and the smell of exhaust singed Gus’s nostrils.

  “Letting us know they’re still there,” she said.

  “You think they’ll charge again?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Gus sighed and reloaded. He then peeked out through the rocks and sized up the armada. The tunnel was alive with trucks and masked characters keeping low between them.

  Collie rose just enough to clear her gun and let off three rounds. A headlight exploded in a short frazzle of sparks, and the light dousing them dimmed. She rose and blew out other headlights before dropping back.

  “Letting them know we’re still here,” she said.

  “How long do we keep this up?”

  “Until we see lights that-a-way,” she said, pointing at the tunnel behind them.

  Gus rubbed the sweat off his brow, examined his hand, and wiped it on his pants. He looked into the tunnel. The sight of that immeasurable void sucked the confidence out of him.

  They returned their attention to the army before them.

  Minutes passed.

  A heavy, frantic panting growing louder whipped his head around.

  Three masked figures rushed up the slope, their bared teeth flashing, their hands ending in what appeared to be bowling balls. Collie half rose, gun blazing, and took the head off the first zombie in a flash of tracer fire and disintegrating teeth. There was a scramble then—Gus shot the second and third attacker in pure fright-fueled reflex. The second gimp landed flat on its chest, its arms splayed as if sliding across home plate. Collie straightened her arm and shot the thing point-blank in the ear, the blast bursting rotten brain matter through the other side.

  In that split section of execution, the third zombie leaped past them both, and Gus tracked it with his Glock, unloading rounds before the mindless crashed into the lower end of the slope behind them.

  Collie emptied her magazine into the mob following the three zombies. She hit several masked men, driving the rest to cover. She dropped behind the mound and quickly reloaded, peering back every so often.

  Something caught her eye. A single figure stood alongside a parked pickup truck. In the shards of light and shadow from the remaining headlights, the bastard had his arm cocked back, holding what looked like a bouncing condom. Its tip filled with about eight ounces of God only knew what.

  Collie knew what it was.

  She rose high enough to clear the crest and put a bullet through that evil bladder, bursting it in an instant. The piece of shit holding the balloon recoiled as if he’d had his hand lopped off, and then quickly dove for cover. Collie did the same, not wanting to catch a crossbow bolt.

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “You rethink that one.”

  “The fuck was that?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “They were trying to distract us. Gonna throw another piss bag at us.”

  “But we just shot their Moes.”

  “I gotta feeling they have more.”

  From the other side, men and women yelled out while machines revved once again.

  “Fuck,” Gus let out in disgust. “These guys got nothing better to do than to wear Halloween shit and piss in baggies?”

  *

  The last exchange flustered the Vulture. The shooter was good. Too good, as evident not only by the routing of the two charges, but one well-placed shot that destroyed a bladder. He’d lost three of his mindless and several lessers, including most of his meat puppets.

  That pissed the Vulture off.

  Nearby, the Leather sloshed water over the pavement where the bladder had landed, diluting it so that the mindless would go for the freshest, the purest scent.

  The individual who’d been splashed stripped and set fire to his garments.

  The Vulture ignored all that, focusing on the shooters ahead. There were at least two just beyond that pile of rubble, and he suspected one was the same shooter they’d encountered back at the island. The shooter had a rifle. A military rifle. And there was at least one handgun as well. He didn’t know how much ammunition they had left, but, apparently, they had quite a bit.

  The Vulture only had one such weapon, but no one to properly use it.

  That thought stopped him.

  “Bring me the new meat,” he said to a nearby Leather. “The one who called himself Top Gun.”

  27

  The remaining headlights winked out. Behind the rubble, the tunnel was black once again.

  “Eyes open,” Collie whispered.

  “Not so worried about them anymore,” Gus whispered back.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  For several seconds, he studied the last zombie he shot, sizing up the corpse not a step away from his feet.

  “You gonna let me know what’s on your mind or what?” Collie asked, distracted by his silence.

  Gus shook his head, yet clearly bothered by something. “Well, I thought they were zombies.”

  “They are zombies.”

  “Not so sure they are.”

  “The fuck you mean you’re not sure? I’m sure. Killed two of them myself.”

  “You sure you shot a couple of undead?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m sure. There and there.”

  She pointed with her sidearm, indicating the recent kills.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure that one there was a zombie.”

  “Why?” Collie demanded.

  Gus took a breath. “I didn’t shoot the head.”

  That got her attention. She immediately inspected the dead thing captivating Gus’s attention. “You sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  That got her thinking. “Watch them. And give me your flashlight.”

  He handed it over.

  “They doing anything out there?” Collie asked.

  “They’re just keeping low. One of them tossed some water over the piss bag you blew out. Saw some heads peeking out around the trucks. Couple of them with crossbows.”

  “They’re putting water on the piss splashes?”

  “Something, anyway,” Gus said. “And I smell something burning.”

  That gave Collie pause for a moment. “I’d give my right nut to have one of those grenades now,” she muttered. “One of them lobbed underneath a gas tank would be a sunny day in Northern Ontario, I shit you not. Now look here.”

  Staying low, she edged toward the unmoving corpse, aiming her Sig at its head all the while. Grimacing, she reached out and rolled the skull one way, then the other.

  “Wear
ing a mask,” she muttered. She angled the flashlight downward, so that their attackers would not detect it. “Switching on.”

  A fist-sized point of light appeared on the ground, near one of the fallen deadheads. Scowling, Collie reached down and grabbed its leather mask. She lifted it and twisted it by the chin.

  “Anything?” Gus asked.

  Collie shook her head. “Not a goddamn scratch. You hit it in the chest there. No problem seeing those blasts. Two holes.”

  “I got off about four shots,” Gus said.

  “Yeah, well, you hit it twice. And no head shot.” She dropped that meatball with a thump. “So they slipped in a live one,” she reasoned.

  “Slipped in a live one? You listening to yourself?”

  “I am, and maybe you should be.”

  “If he was alive, he was crazy.”

  “Plenty of those around.”

  Gus scratched at his beard. “That means the other ones were alive.”

  Collie scowled again. “That’s not right.”

  “A head shot will kill the living as well as the dead,” Gus pointed out. “All I’m saying… that one there clearly died from two shots to the chest. Not a head shot. So that means he was alive. The other ones had to be alive, too, right? Because I don’t think the dead would work with a living one. I mean, look at the blood for Christ’s sake.”

  Collie’s scowl deepened. Then, after a thoughtful few seconds. “Check on those fuckheads out there.”

  Gus did, ensuring that the little horde of crazies wasn’t sneaking up on them. While he did, Collie removed the mask from the dead man’s head. She hissed in distaste while she worked. The unmasked head reeked, as if someone had personally shat a hot party streamer inside the mask before pulling it over the thing’s face.

  “Oh dear Jesus,” Collie said.

  “That thing stinks,” Gus agreed.

  “No, well, yeah, that, but… oh God damn.”

  Gus waited.

  She gripped the head and twisted it, violently, pulling it so that Gus could see. She hunched down and, using the mask as a cloth, gripped the unsettling swamp grass that was the thing’s hair. As she lifted the head further off the ground, the nearby light illuminated its face.

  Gus didn’t say a word. He’d seen more than enough dead people to recognize the one Collie had a grip on was indeed a genuine Moe. A man, with black sunken eyes, of which only one was present. The other was merely an oversized cigarette burn of a cavity. There were holes in both its cheeks, as if the things had accidently—or intentionally—chewed through the meat there. The skin color was a pale blue, even under the flashlight’s glare.

  But then he noticed it, and what he saw drew him closer.

  “What?” Collie said, also studying the face.

  “Around the mouth,” Gus pointed out. “Those black things that are usually there. Like barnacles.”

  Collie got in closer. “There are none.”

  They shared a look then, one of mutual shellshock, where the implications didn’t quite sink in.

  “Check the others,” Gus said. A headache was hammering nails into his brain, a result of being stressed, tired, and confused.

  Behind the pickups and beyond, the masked crazies were watching and making their own plans. He just wasn’t sure what.

  “Look at this,” Collie said.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  28

  “Guh,” Top Gun spat. Threads of fat silk stretched from his lips as the ball gag was removed. He wiped his face and breathed, unobstructed, through his mouth for a change. “Christ those things taste like dead dog balls. Not that I know what dead dog balls taste—”

  One of the four Leather surrounding Top Gun slapped him across his face. Top Gun took it, took the hint, and shut up. The Bronze was one of the foursome that hauled his ass to the forefront, and the Bronze had a hammer hanging off his waist.

  Top Gun was on his knees and didn’t look up, because the Bronze’s hammer was right there at eye level. He hadn’t seen the Bronze use the tool, but he had heard the tall executioner use it, repeatedly, on one poor bastard.

  Trucks began pulling back toward the entrance to the tunnel, where it broadened into three lanes. Top Gun watched with casual curiosity, until a dark figure appeared before him. Top Gun raised his gaze toward the fabricated face of the Vulture.

  “You,” the Vulture said. “You can shoot a rifle.”

  Even though he’d been a slave to the Leather for only a couple of days, Top Gun had learned quickly not to keep any of them waiting—especially the Vulture. “I can,” he answered after only a second’s hesitation.

  The Vulture snapped his fingers, and a lesser appeared holding Top Gun’s sinister AUG-20.

  Top Gun blinked at the weapon.

  Nearby, the Bronze extracted his hammer with slow, deliberate care. He hefted it very close to Top Gun’s bruised cheek.

  “I want you to shoot some people,” the Vulture instructed. “From a distance. They are preventing us from advancing into this tunnel. Do you understand?”

  Top Gun didn’t ask why the Leather couldn’t find one of their own to fire the weapon. Instead, he swallowed and said, “I understand.”

  Another Leather held out a small ammo case. Top Gun knew it well.

  “Kill them,” the Vulture said. There was no promise of better treatment. No words of being kept alive. But on some unspoken signal, the Leather surrounding him seemed to edge closer, their meaning clear.

  Top Gun didn’t hesitate. “Sure,” he said.

  29

  The two mindless were as bare around the lower jaw as if they had shaven with a straight razor before they died. None of the characteristic skin tags that identified zombies were present. After a thorough inspection, Collie met Gus’s quizzical expression. Collie even reached down and stretched the cheeks of both, one way and then the other, to ensure they weren’t missing anything.

  “The fuck does it mean?” Gus wanted to know.

  Collie met his pleading eyes. “No clue.”

  “Are they zombies?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re zombies.”

  “But they can die just by being shot in the body. Doesn’t have to be the head.”

  Collie lifted her head as if shifting into a higher gear of thought. “We don’t know that. You shot only one and it died. To prove that, we’d have to shoot more of them. And not in the head.”

  The revving of engines distracted them both. Collie switched off the flashlight.

  Gus crawled to his perch and checked on the pack of psychos. Collie did the same from the other side. Exhaust billowed in the light and shadow. The pickups were pulling back, but not far. The two nearest trucks drew back about thirty feet, just clear of the corpses littering the pavement. The rest of the vehicles retreated farther back toward the tunnel entrance.

  “What are they doing?” Gus asked anxiously.

  Collie didn’t answer right away. “Something,” she finally let out. “Keep your head down. And if you peek, don’t pop up in the same place twice.”

  “Right.”

  Gus listened to the rigs moving behind the rubble.

  “How long would it take for them to get to that box thingy you were talking about?” he asked.

  Collie thought about it. “Given that they’re tired, running on empty, I’d say close to ten minutes. If they start to lag, tack on five more. Give or take another five to get inside—if they can get inside—but I’m certain they can. Then another five minutes to locate the EVs and fire them up.”

  “What if they’re dead?”

  “They’re not dead. This whole place draws power from its own grid. Geothermal, man. If there’s no activity in the base, it’s programmed to go into sleep mode. Those rigs would still get a charge. Except…”

  Collie faltered.

  “Except what?”

  “Battery life.”

  “Battery life?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure exactly how long th
e batteries in those rigs can keep functioning before… burning out.”

  Gus lowered his chin onto his chest.

  “But if they are good,” she resumed, “then they can hit sixty klicks an hour. Someone would be back here in a minute for us.”

  “Okay, so, how long have we been here?”

  “Since they left? Maybe twenty-five.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Maybe twenty.”

  Gus wasn’t sure himself. He juggled balls that weren’t there. “So they should be back soon, right?”

  “…Maybe.”

  He considered the long dark tunnel leading to Whitecap, waiting for headlights to appear. “The fuck’s keeping them then?”

  “They’ll be back. Question is if we’ll be alive when they get here.”

  Commotion from the leather-clad freaks drew Gus’s attention, so he crawled back to his perch, careful to get behind a different cluster of debris. The crazies were still moving things around.

  “They’re up to something,” he said.

  “My guess…” Collie began. “They’re pulling back from where I shot that piss bag.”

  “That was a good shot.”

  “That’s your tax dollars working right there.”

  “Nice to know I’m getting something back.”

  “Honey, you got the best.”

  “What do you think they’re doing?” Gus asked, not knowing if he would like the answer.

  Collie thought about it. “Those two rigs are serving as a blinder to block our line of sight. This pile of shit we're hiding behind—I’m guessing that the armored truck was here, and when the backhoe rooted it free, the ceiling fell in. Part of it. Enough to unfuck the passage for Whitecap’s undead personnel to march up and over it. I’m guessing those leather fuckheads will want to open it up a little more. Maybe pull back that backhoe. Then the truck. Then try another rush.”

  “But we’re still here.”

  “Yeah. And we rodeo-fucked them last time. Chances are, we won’t get them like that again.”

  Collie smiled at him. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying.”

  30

  There were only two rounds left in the AUG-20. Top Gun figured someone had a grand old time popping off a few shots at road signs or some similar shit before realizing the ammunition was a finite resource. Still, he loaded the remaining bullets by forefinger and thumb into the magazine. If he’d had a full mag, he would have popped off as many Leather dickheads as he could before trying to escape.